Of Course, You Know This Means WAR

Yeah, I’m back. Don’t get all excited or anything.

The hot stat in baseball is replacement value. It’s expressed in different ways, including WAR, or “wins above replacement,” but its basic premise is this: if you replaced player X on your team with a statistically average player, would he perform better or worse than the player he replaced – and by extension, would the team be better or worse?

Of course, this being a baseball statistic it has all kinds of tendrils – would the team be better offensively? Defensively? Would he hit in the clutch? Would he get on base? Would he throw out base-stealers? Would he give up the gopher ball in late-and-close situations? – but the idea of replacement value really boils down to how close a given player comes to the norm.

Replacement value is semi-self-fulfilling. Successful teams have more above-the-norm players, but it’s not clear whether those teams are successful because they have more above-the-norm players, or more of those teams’ players are above the norm because they’re on successful teams. Success begets performance and vice versa, and don’t forget: “Mother and Child Reunion” was first a chicken-and-egg dish served in a Chinese restaurant.

Football being less stat-driven than baseball (though not for lack of want-to), replacement value is not the hot topic it is on the diamond. Replacement value is less valuable in football because three-quarters of an NFL roster is on the field for one-third of a game or more. Many of those players are going to be at or below replacement value. It’s unavoidable. It’s the definition of the mean in a  world where all the children are above average.

(With all the situational offenses and defenses sometimes you’re better-served looking at the replacement value within a position on a given team – moving from the designated run-stuffer to the designated pass-rusher on defense or looking at the first-down back versus the third-down back. One of the reasons the Giants are so good is that Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw are both above replacement. Ditto for Osi Umenyiora and Jason Pierre-Paul.)

In football, replacement value is good for answering tough questions at the top of the pyramid. Who’s better – Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? How can you tell?

The baseball answer to that, delivered from the pulpit of replacement value, is to take Manning and Brady away from their teams, replace them with a player whose replacement value is at the norm, and see what happens.

That’s a loaded question. Take Albert Pujols out of the St. Louis lineup and there’s an Albert Pujols-shaped hole that can't be filled by Matt Holliday or Lance Berkman. The Cardinals still have to bat nine; they can slip in a Skip Schumaker and go into run-manufacturing mode, but it’s a partial transformation at best. They’re not going to go all bunt-y and start running Berkman like he was Michael Bourn.

Contrast that with football. The most crushing blow to an offense in 2011 outside of Peyton Manning occurred when the Vikings lost Adrian Peterson. How did the ‘Queens react? By not running the same offense at all. Joe Webb got the keys, the passing attack flipped around, the running attack was stood on its head, and while it wasn’t more successful it wasn’t markedly less successful. The point is that given resources and resourcefulness it can be done.

Indianapolis, of course, did none of those things, because it wasn’t built to do them. Joseph Addai and Donald Brown are running backs whose chief asset is not running the ball 30 times a game. They’re the Trevor Hoffman fastball, effective not because it’s used but because it might be used the next pitch … or maybe the pitch after that. The offense built around Peyton Manning could not be rebuilt around anyone else, certainly not Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky, or Kerry Collins, and the defense wasn’t good enough to deliver a win when the offense couldn’t outscore the opposition. So on the surface you’d guess that Peyton Manning had the greatest replacement value of any player in recent times.

Not so fast; we still have the Brady-Manning question to answer. Why did the Patriots not disintegrate when they lost Tom Brady in 2008, while the Colts went kablooey when they lost Manning in 2011? Defense is a big part of the answer, and having a defensive coach as head coach. The Indianapolis defense was shredded by injuries in 2011; New England in 2008 had a great defense, with Richard Seymour, Vince Wilfork, Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison, Jerrod Mayo, and Adalius Thomas all playing at a high level. They weren’t the 16-0 defense of the year before, but they were a top-10 defense, and the best defense the Pats have had since.

Even so, the offense was the league’s sixth-best unit, with the same crappy running game that New England has always had. Good receivers to be sure – Wes Welker and Randy Moss – but not really better than Wayne and Garcon and Dallas Clark in Indy. So you think maybe Matt Cassel was better than Curtis Painter?

Maybe a little, but maybe not that much. If Tom Brady’s replacement value is significantly lower than Peyton Manning’s, replacing Brady with Cassel doesn’t hurt nearly as much as replacing Manning with Painter-slash- Collins-slash- Orlovsky. So we come back to the original conclusion: Manning is better than Brady.

Yes, to the extent that his replacement value is higher. You may want Brady over Manning in a big game, and that’s your right. Replacement value doesn’t go there.

All of which is the long way ‘round to the big question: What player is/was the most indispensable to his team?

The simplest way to look at this is to examine the change in record from the year before the player left to the year he left, and then if he went to a new team the difference between the year before the player came and the year he came. A couple of simple change equations, acknowledging that the loss of one player does not define any team’s season.

Let’s work with the top 50 players of all time according to Pro Football Reference, and let’s look at changes that occurred in the meat of that player’s career, if that’s possible.

It gets dicey. Carl Eller and Johnny Unitas changed teams at the tail-end of their careers, when they were close to being replacement-level players. That’s not the same as Marshall Faulk changing teams after three years or T.O. being dealt to the Eagles in the prime of his career.

This little work is split in two, with a list of players who went from one team to a different team this time, and a list of players who didn’t go anywhere saved for the next episode, along with a big wrapup.

Now, the list of players who switched teams.

Lest you think the transition from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers was smooth and productive, guess again. The Packers got more than 50 percent worse; the Jets got 125 percent better. And the QB aside, the Favre-led team was nearly indistinguishable from the Rodgers-led team; it wasn’t like the defense collapsed or the offense was gutted by injuries. Favre at that stage of his career was that much better than Rodgers at that stage of his career. It was a big difference.

The difference between Warren Moon and Billy Joe Tolliver was likewise huge. Unlike the calculated move Green Bay made from the old pro (Favre) to his successor (Rodgers), Houston went from a productive star, to a 28-year-old journeyman who could serve as the poster boy for sub-replacement-level quarterbacks. If Curtis Painter were older, less intelligent, and longer off the tee he would be Billy Joe Tolliver. Given that, a precipitous decline was inevitable.

Interesting stuff abounds in these numbers. Love him or hate him, T.O. made the Eagles better and the ‘Niners worse – though he had the opposite effect when he went from Philly to Dallas three years later. Randy Moss, meanwhile, has had the opposite effect everywhere he's gone. Randy Moss is a player whose teams get worse when he arrives. That doesn't mean teams aren't good when Moss arrives, or that they don't prosper at some point during his tenure. They just don't get better when he arrives – and they get better when he leaves.

You can see how two safeties, Paul Krause and Emlen Tunnell, stabilized young defenses, and how three great defensive backs – Rod Woodson, Ronnie Lott, and Herb Adderley – were unable to do much for established defenses.

You can also see that L.T. is a good player. The Chargers may have underestimated how good – or perhaps they simply forgot that addition by subtraction is still subtraction. How could the Chargers without Tomlinson possibly be a better team than the Chargers with him?

And then there's Marshall Faulk. When he went from the Colts to the Rams he pulled off the amazing combination of making his new team nine games better, while the team he left got 10 games better. There has never been an NFL trade that made each team that much better.

This is good, but there's still the Peyton Manning situation to consider. And we will ... next time. 

And I promise there will be a next time.

Packers-Niners: Twisting by the (Talent) Pool

Packers-Niners. Just the mention of those teams conjures images of California-cool quarterbacks kneeling down at the end of games. If sometimes you toy with the notion that every game that has ever been won in the National Football League has been won by one of these teams, you wouldn’t be toying alone. And yet why does this game have the feeling of anticlimax?

Could it be that it’s because it’s been done better in real life? The bookend Packers-Niners playoff games – the Packers’ win in the rain in 1996 and the Niners’ down-to-the-wire win two years later – have everything you could want in a football game, including bratwurst and large, inexpensive beers. If they don’t include every player on each all-time team they include a more-than-representative sampling, especially in the Niners’ case.

But enough dealing with reality. Let’s jump back into the unreal world and take a hard look at these two make-believe teams. The Niners have a HOFer everywhere, but not always multiple HOFers. The Packers have multiple HOFers everywhere. Advantage Packers. But in certain key areas the Niners’ HOFers are better than the Packers’ HOFers. Would you rather have Joe Montana, Steve Young and Y.A. Tittle or Bart Starr, Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers? Jerry Rice and Terrell Owens or Don Hutson and James Lofton? Ronnie Lott and Jim Johnson or Herb Adderly and Willie Wood (and Charles Woodson)? Advantage Niners.

However, in the lines and at running back, those brutal locales not too dissimilar from eastern Colorado, the Packers dominate. Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo, Cal Hubbard, and Mike Michalske trump Bob St. Clair et al. Leo Nomellini and the interchangeable pack horses of the Bill Walsh era, Dana Stubblefield and Bryant Young cower in the massive shadows of Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, and Reggie White. Joe Perry and Hugh McIlhenny (and the criminally underappreciated Roger Craig and Rickey Watters) are strictly second-tier guys compared to Hornung, Taylor, Clarke Hinkle, Johnny Blood, Tony Canadeo, and Arnie Herber. And sorry Bill Walsh, but Vince Lombardi, Curley Lambeau, and Mike Holmgren take you down.

But it’s close. It’s very close. When you run the two-deeps on a continuum and cut off the top 15 players, they’re virtually identical. But when you get to players 47 and 48, it’s clear that the Packers have better talent.

So let’s do it that way. Let’s take the two-deep starting lineups of both teams, put them on continuums, and then see how the bottom tiers of both look.

Using a combination of Pro Football Reference’s Weighted Average Value and Elo Rater scores, here are the players scoring more than 100 on a combined index where the lower the score, the better the player:

Niners Packers


Roger Craig Dave Robinson

Bob St. Clair James Lofton

Harris Barton Jerry Kramer

Hugh McIlhenny Charles Woodson

Billy Wilson Donald Driver

Joe Perry Chad Clifton

Gene Washington Fred Carr

Brent Jones Hawg Hanner

Bruce Bosley John Anderson

Abe Woodson Bobby Dillon

Keena Turner Sterling Sharpe

Tommy Hart Lionel Aldridge

Ken Willard Mark Tauscher

Cedrick Hardman Ken Ellis

John Taylor Aaron Kampman

Dana Stubblefield Gale Gillingham

Merton Hanks Paul Coffman

Roland Lakes Mike McCoy

Guy McIntyre Willie Buchanon

Frank Nunley

Ken Norton Jr.

Eric Wright

Dwight Hicks

Forrest Blue

Woody Peoples

Kermit Alexander

Tim McDonald

Monty Stickles

Bruno Banducci

Howard Mudd

Hacksaw Reynolds

These lists don’t lack for good players, but they point up the problem with the Niners: there’s more bottom, and it goes deeper. Ken Ellis, Aaron Kampman and Gale Gillingham (and what is it with Gillingham getting nothing from history? I know the guy just died and we’re all rosy-eyed about his worth as a football player, but he was absolutely the best thing about the Packers after Lombardi left, and was every bit as good As Jerry Kramer, who gets plenty of forearm shivers from the football cognoscenti as-is) are very comparable to Hacksaw Reynolds, Tim McDonald (another head-scratcher as far as history goes), Forrest Blue, and Woody Peoples. But where the Niners offer up Bruno Banducci and Merton Hanks the Packers counter with Buckets Goldenberg and Jug Earpe – different, but better different. In this world, where a replacement-value guy is a five-time All-Pro, the Packers have better players.

Okay, so we’ve beaten that particular dead horse to death. Talent wins most but not all of these games. How does talent fare here?

Pretty well.

It’s a different sort of game, a little like a modern-day Jets-Patriots game minus the chubby guys in hoodies. The Niners want to throw it all over the field and worry about defense when they get there, while the Packers want to pound the ball and play defense and keep Brett Favre staked to the ground, Gulliver-style, on the sideline. (and yes, Aaron Rodgers is in charge of the little hammer.)

The result is much like the recent Jets-Patriots tussles, where the Patriots get the best of the stat sheet but the Jets win. In this case, as the snow swirls around Lambeau and the in-ground turf heaters create a surface of a consistency similar to those things they called “steaks” you used to get at Ponderosa, the Niners take the opening kickoff, run it out to the 47 courtesy of a great Abe Woodson return, march it down to the 24, and miss a field goal. The Packers stumble out to the 32 and punt. The Niners run the punt out to midfield, run and pass it down inside the 15, and throw an interception (Bobby Dillon). The Packers run back the interception to the 21, pound it out to the 24, and punt. The Niners take a penalty on the runback that lands them at their own 33 and fly down the field to the Packer 42, where the drive stalls and the Niners punt it into the end zone. When the quarter ends at this point it’s a mercy-killing.

Perhaps energized by the Packer band’s version of “Ride My Seesaw” at the quarter break, the Packers mount a drive … actually, they get a first down. Overwhelmed by this display of offensive prowess, Abe Woodson fumbles the ensuring punt and the Packers recover at the San Francisco 38. The Packers don’t do much with the field position; a Starr-to-Hutson square-out takes the ball down to the Niners’ 19 before the demi-drive stalls. Chester Marcol doesn’t miss, however, and the Packers take a middlingly late 3-0 lead.

At this point San Francisco has 87 yards, two turnovers and no points. The Packers have 30 yards and three points.

And the beat goes on. The Niners roll up 53 yards on a drive that ends in a field goal blocked by Fred Carr and Ted Hendricks. The Packers go three-and-out. The Niners roll up 31 yards and punt. The Packers go five-and-out. The Niners roll up 40 yards before two penalties and a sack end their drive. The Packers get the ball on their own 32 with 1:53 left in the half.

Finally, some semblance of offense. A 13-yard Tony Canadeo scamper is followed by a Starr-to-Lofton post pattern that takes the ball down to the San Francisco 22. A flare pass to John Blood McNally takes the ball down to the 5, and that’s close enough for Jim Taylor to bash it into the end zone in three tries. Marcol’s extra point makes it 10-0 Packers as the halftime gun fires.

The Niners can’t be expected to stay down forever, and they don’t. After another Green Bay three-and-out to start the second half, Steve Young enters the game in relief of Joe Montana and immediately catches fire. He hits Jerry Rice for 19 yards and Terrell Owens for 23, scrambles for 11 and hits Hugh McIlhenny on a swing pass that goes for 18 yards and a score. Tommy Davis’ extra point (at last! Something through the uprights!) makes it 10-7.

At this point, the lid is officially off and the game is officially not the game of the first half. Starr begins to click hisownself. On a 77-yard drive Starr hits Lofton for 22, Hutson for 31 and Sharpe for 11 and a touchdown. Young answers with a 73-yard drive that culminates in an eight-yard Brent Jones TD strike. On the Packers’ ensuing series, Starr audibles out of a dive play to Jim Taylor and calls an option pass. Cecil Isbell hits Sharpe in stride from 57 yards out, and suddenly it’s halfway through the fourth quarter and 24-14 Green Bay.

The Niners make it interesting. Young alternates Perry runs and passes to Rice and Jones on a 65-yard drive that takes the ball down to the 8 – field-goal range for Tommy Davis. Now it’s 24-17 and a seven-point game.

With six minutes left the Niners kick off to the Packers. The Niners get the ball back with 47 seconds left in the shadow of their own goalposts.

They don’t go gentle into that good-and-cold eastern Wisconsin night. Young’s bomb in the direction of Terrell Owens draws a pass-interference penalty, bringing the ball out to midfield. Two more passes, and the Niners are inside the Packer 30 with 25 seconds left.

With no timeouts left Young rolls right, Reggie White hot on his trail. Young underestimates White’s closing speed one last, fatal time. White closes the gap, flings a huge paw around Young, drives him to the turf and refuses to get off the quarterback until the clock reads triple zeroes. The gun fires, the game ends, and the Packers survive.

“Survive” is the operative word. The Packers are outgained by 85 yards, 462 to 377. Surprisingly, no one runs much, not even the Packers. Jim Taylor gains 71 yards in 15 carries, Canadeo 19 in six, Hinkle 14 in three, and Ahman Green 11 in one. McIlhenny gains 37 yards on six carries, Joe Perry 22 in 12, Craig 21 in three, John Henry Johnson five in three, and Young 24 on two scrambles.

Starr throws for 306 yards and two TDs, but his numbers are eclipsed by the combination of Montana (174 yards, two interceptions) and Young (179 yards, two touchdowns).

The Packers came in feeling like they had to run to win, and they won it by passing. Football is funny that way.

Determining who is best positioned to win a game is a question of talent. Actually winning a game is something else altogether.

The Ultimate Battle For The Really Big Bay

Funny how life works. Conduct your life on and off the field with the courteous restraint of a Tasmanian devil and eventually you get nailed for steroids. Match up football teams by all-time win-loss percentage and play them through a bracket, and the ‘Niners meet the Raiders in the second round.

This one shapes up as a barnburner, in part because the teams are simultaneously of an era and not of an era. Many of the teams’ best players played against each other, but the games they played scarcely resemble one another. The ‘Niners played a pass-first, controlled-passing, athletic-defense game. The Raiders ran first, beat you up in the lines, and had a passing game that could beneficently be called uncontrolled.

I know this sort of analogy descends into cliché faster than Lindsay Lohan can go from house arrest to rehab, but the two teams really reflect their communities. Oakland is gritty and nasty, a black vision of doom set to a soundtrack by N.W.A.; San Francisco has been so wide-open you’d almost expect to see Jerry Garcia rolling numbers on the sideline and Steve Young marching out of Candlestick arm-in-arm with Harvey Milk.

Furthermore, there is no clear-cut favorite between the two. Both have mystique, both have a resume, and both have a relatively limited past, so unlike the Cardinals, they can’t dredge up an Ernie Nevers to make up for six decades of Marcel Shipp and Elmer Angsman.

So let’s set the scene: The Raiders trot out an offense featuring Marcus Allen, Fred Biletnikoff, Tim Brown, and a massive line to face a defense consisting of Ronnie Lott and some bodies. The Niners counter with Steve Young, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Terrell Owens, Joe Perry, and Hugh McIlhenny (and not much of a line) versus a defense consisting of Ronnie Lott and some bodies. (Actually, Ronnie Lott does not make the all-time Raiders roster, and the bodies include Howie Long, Lyle Alzado, and the vastly underrated Greg Townsend. But it makes for nice symmetry.)

It sounds reasonable that like the Bears, the Raiders could ride their up-front superiority to a grind-it-out victory over a high-flying offense.

Well, no.

The devil for the Raiders is in the details. They have no quarterback, and you need one to win one of these games, especially when you’re playing a team where the guy holding the Sharpie cap for the guy holding the Sharpie for the guy holding the clipboard (John Brodie) threw for 12,000 more yards than the Raiders’ No. 1 (Ken Stabler).

The Raiders’ secondary is likewise a little light – el baddo when you’re playing a team like the ‘Niners that hooks up more than Bret Michaels on South Beach. It’s not that the secondary is missing HOF-quality talent; it’s that the talent outside of Willie Brown is either past its prime (Lott), before its time (Charles Woodson), not quite ready for prime time (the soonly departed Nnamdi Asomugha) or star-crossed in some other way (Lester Hayes, Jack Tatum).

Worse yet for a team playing a West Coast passing offense, the linebackers are highly suspect. It’s asking a lot of Phil Villipiano for him to chase around Brent Jones, run down Roger Craig, and basically be the guy back there.

The offensive challenges are likewise daunting. The Raiders’ long-bomb passing game plays right into the hands of a talented secondary that includes Jim Johnson, Eric Wright, Tim McDonald, Merton Hanks, and Abe Woodson in addition to Lott. The 49ers’ D-line is a potent mix of run-stuffers (Dana Stubblefield and Leo Nomellini) and pass-rushers (Bryant Young and Fred Dean). And the linebackers are rangy and athletic enough to chase down Marcus Allen (and who else? Mark van Eeghen? Justin Fargas?).

Still, the Raiders put up a good fight. They take the opening kickoff and pound the ball down the field, running Marcus Allen right and left and mixing in little bits of Biletnikoff and Todd Christiansen. The drive bogs down inside the 20 and the Raiders settle for a short Sebastian Janikowski field goal.

As it turned out, that was all the opening the ‘Niners needed.

Young marches the ‘Niners down the field at head-spinning speed, capping the drive with a short TD toss to Brent Jones. A booming Ray Guy punt pins back the ‘Niners against their goal, but Young could care less. He rolls out for 16, Perry and Craig crack off big runs, and then Rice splits the defense from 43 yards out. The first quarter ends with San Francisco on top 14-3.

The Raiders come back on a Stabler-to-Branch bomb set up by a long Tim Brown kick return, but the ‘Niners strike yet again. This time it’s Montana doing the honors, swinging one out to Perry and watching him jet it in from 27.

The remainder of the half follows the same pattern. The teams trade scores unevenly, the ‘Niners score their fourth straight TD, and the first half ends with San Francisco up 28-13.

Things change little in the second half. San Francisco’s superior depth wears down the Raiders, even Y.A. Tittle plays a few snaps, and the 49ers move on 42-23.

The stats tell the story. Marcus Allen runs for 121, but Stabler completes only 14 of his 33 passes for 278 yards, a score, and two interceptions. Young, Montana, and Tittle throw 39 passes, complete 25, and roll up 407 yards passing, with four TDs and only one pick. Rice catches 11 and Jones seven, and everyone else pitches in. Perry runs for 67 and Craig 51, and that’s more than enough.

The tough paper matchup turns out to be not so tough after all. The Raiders’ greatest weakness meshed with the ‘Niners’ greatest strength, and the result was carnage.

The Silver and Black still have their swagger (and not the Old Spice swagger, either). Nothing can take their swagger. But what they could really use is a few more good players.